It’s been almost a year since I left Vietnam.
I was so yearning for a new life, a new routine, going back to work, milder temperature, being closer to our families and friends…and I’ve got it all.
Yet at every sign of Vietnam, it is just heart wrenching. A smell, any iconic object or red flag, can literally bury me like an avalanche of nostalgia and memories, of which I become aware just the exact moment I randomly come across it.
I am realizing I wiped away 4 years of my life in a day, and every time something turns on a memory or revive a feeling, I can’t help but feel lost and devastated. Like I wake up all of a sudden and I am forced to acknowledge that it was not just a dream, that just a few months ago I called that place home, and for a long time. And I won’t probably be seeing it again for the next 10 years or more. When nothing will ever be the same as it is crystallized in my memories.
The thing is, where do I put all of that in this new life?
Everything I learned, loved and hated, all the things that shocked me in the first place and I was eventually used to, my routines, my new taste for food, my people, my own self in that life. .
Where did it all go, and how could I reconcile these two chapters of my life?
Mapping out all Asian restaurants in town is clearly not enough, keeping in touch with the people I shared the experience with either. But it looks like this is all I am left with. And I am carrying such a heavy luggage which needs a collocation, and cannot just be left abandoned in a remote corner of my mind.
Since we moved to Vienna every little thing has been a readjustment, most of the time in a good way, but it still required a process. Walking through the neat and tidy streets of the Imperial city, wearing boots with fur and winter clothes after 4 years, being exposed to new sounds and faces. The clear sky and the impressive daylight. Losing all my points of reference and what with a lot of work and years of processing became my neighborhood, my crew, my new place in the world.
…guess where
And now that the process is completed and we are all settled, that tangle of emotions and memories still stays, and seems to have no place in this new life.
I find it very difficult to bring up any Vietnam-related topic with my new acquaintances. Every time, I feel like I am just telling another expat story no one is interested in, something which belongs to the past, and it doesn’t really matter to the person I am now.
Most of the time Hanoi doesn’t even have a clear collocation in people’s mind. People have no idea how it looks like, and it is so reductive and belittling to describe it over and over again, with the same stupid metaphors and images which make everybody laugh or amaze, with the only purpose of keeping the small talk going.
I feel like I just give references that put people in a familiar frame to act like they empathize with me. But at the end of the day, any reaction turns out to be so meaningless to my need of bridging the gap and alleviate that sense of loneliness that comes with being the only one knowing where I belong and come from, and what this big move and settlement has been really about.
I should have given people more chances probably, trusting their sensitivity, embracing their comments and genuine curiosity. But every time, when we suddenly jumped to any other trivial topic, I felt so miserable and lonely that I’ve learned to just skip it altogether.
All in all we just met, why should anybody really care? Would I, the other way around?
In the beginning I was relying on the evocative power of things to feel somehow closer to those days. Material stuff can be such a repository of memories, and this was very clear when I had an empty house to fill.
This made me think of that time I went to visit a couple who have been living in Africa for 25 years before moving to Hanoi, while I was still there. I was so impressed and felt so disconnected in their French colonial villa in Tay Ho, full of African colorful fabrics, sculptures, crafts and paintings. I wandered of how lost they felt, from a desert to an overpopulated city, from all those bright colors to the many shades of gray in Hanoi, from the silence and the sounds of nature to the constant honking.
And then, our stuff came and we found ourselves in a Viennese Zinshaus with crystal chandelier and a marble fireplace, decorated with tropical cushions and bamboo rugs. And it seemed to be the only way to make it feel homey. To make it feel our place.
But as time goes by, I need something more than a piece of furniture to remind me of what it’s been like.
This move happened while I was still in the process of reconciling myself with the person I was before leaving my country to live abroad, before giving up the only job I was skilled for and passionate about, and eventually become a stay at home mom. And now I fear I am letting go one other part of me, and I am so not ready to lose one more piece of my identity. I need to hold onto it, or I will never be able to feel like myself, even the dullest version of myself, in whatever context in this new life. And to find a way to the people that have always been there either, to make them feel I am still here for them, without having to pretend I am keeping it together while all my certainties have collapsed one after another. I need to reminisce, and cherish those memories to stay true to myself.
I am still in touch with my Hanoian friends, and it’s been so relieving to feel their compassion and understanding while they were going through a relocation themselves. But I also wonder how long it will be before our memories together will be so blurry and distant that we will no longer see the point of catching up regularly to hear what’s going on in our new lives. Or sharing a google photo anniversary. Before there will be too much life setting us apart.
“When there will be no common fate, we are just going hand in hand to dissipate our collective memory”
And in the meantime, life is going on so differently, and I am fully absorbed in my new roles and responsibilities. And I am so grateful for how much easier this life is and for my growing family, but it seems so difficult to explain that one thing does not exclude the other. That those 4 years were an inside journey and a concentration of life that will leave a mark forever, that you would never go back but you have hated as well as loved that place and it still means the world to you.
And I am scared that leaving an entire world behind no one around me knows about, will eventually disconnect me from what I really feel and care about. That together with such an intense experience coming to an end, something crucial – and ultimately my authenticity and true essence – will be lost on the way.
And I have nothing but a painful feeling of disconnection and a knot of misplaced emotions to keep those memories alive.
Vietnam overload 